Alrighty, then…pub date. I see Random House has posted the “Official North American Publication Date” …so now we have one.

I sympathize with everyone who would like the book out sooner than March–so would I. But I thought I might explain just _why_ Random House decided on this date.

Now, my personal deadline (such as it is) hasn’t changed; I still expect/hope to deliver the manuscript sometime this fall. RH’s thoughts in re setting the pub date for March were:

1. With a delivery in the fall (perhaps late fall), they’d have to do a huge “crash” production in order to get the book into stores by December. We’ve done this kind of thing before, with THE FIERY CROSS, A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES, _and_ AN ECHO IN THE BONE. Having experienced the horrors of dealing with a 1000-page book in a Big Hurry….they _really_ don’t want to do it again, if they can help it. By itself, though, that wouldn’t be enough reason to push the date back.

2. What’s a better reason is that if the book came out in mid-December, we couldn’t do a full-scale tour (last time I did a full-scale tour, it covered six countries and took two and a half months). And as you can see from the chorus of, “But why aren’t you coming to Dallas/SanFrancisco/GopherSprings/Galveston/St.Paul/Wilmington/Bangor/etc./etc./etc….” _every_ dang time I post an appearance schedule–you’d have to assume that a whole lot of people would really _like_ it if I was able to come sign the new book somewhere close to them. And I couldn’t do that with a December pub date, ‘cuz much as I love y’all , I love my family summat more, and am not leaving them at Christmas.

3. But the MAIN reason for moving the date is simple: the new TV series. Two parts to that:

3a. I don’t have CONTROL over the series content/casting/etc.–but I am legally a co-producer and consultant, by the terms of the contract we signed with Sony/STARZ. They start filming in September; that means I need to be semi-available, at least to give the occasional opinion, as of July or August. Now, I don’t _think_ that this responsibility will slow down the final phases of the book much (I’m accustomed to working on multiple projects, and to working just about anywhere)—but I’ve never done this before, so I can’t say for sure. Much more important (to Random House ), though, is…

3b. They’d _really_ like MOBY to come out close to the air date of the TV series, for very obvious reasons. The instant I told them that the series had been picked up by Starz, they started plotting marketing, packaging, you name it…it was at a cocktail party, and you could see them all light up like a pinball machine as they got the news.

I’m figuring from the general response to the announcement of the TV series that most of you are more or less in favor of that–but whether you individually are or not…it’ll happen, barring some unforeseen catastrophe. Which means that it will have a fairly big impact on the books as a whole, and on MOBY as a unit. And you know…publishers _care_ about that sort of thing. Intensely.

So that’s it. For my part–all I can do is give you the best book I can write, and I promise you that. <smile>

Well, it’s not the pre-Christmas date of December 10th that Amazon.com teased us with, but on the bright side, it will give us more time to reread the series/reacquaint ourselves with all the little details that we may have forgotten or overlooked in the past…I canna wait!

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